Sometimes when things get hard, we tend to set our sights on what's hard, that difficult thing that keeps us upset, and we turn our back on our strengths.

When I began to read, I began to exist

We all know we should eat right and we should exercise, but reading is treated as if it's this wonderful adjunct.

I would enjoy having dinner with the poet/playwright Derek Walcott.

Idiots don't know they're idiots, which is unfortunate.

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

It's a hard life sometimes and the biggest temptation is to let how hard it is be an excuse to weaken